And above the first Wolly Pockets garden installed on the western wall of the Science Building.
Marian and the beginning of vertical gardens
The concept of growing a vertical garden at CSUS was inspired by the enormous vertical garden across the street from the BHV department store in Paris. Check the link below to see other examples in Paris.
gridskipper.com/archives/entries/201/201671.php
Our beautiful campus boasts lots of vertical, white outside wall space, and I began to think we could build one of our own. Fast forward to Ian Rosenfield's '10 senior project on possible architectural visions for the new middle school and his mention of the inclusion of vertical gardens. Marian Pearcy '10, who was in attendance at Ian's fantastic talk, shared an interest in the hanging gardens, and we converged on Ian after the talk. Within minutes we decided to build a beta as an experiment, and I set out to get help from Mr. P and Chris Read in our science department. Since Chris is in charge of the horizontal garden, she jumped on board immediately.
But it was Marian who took the lead and the call for action. She and I visited local nurseries for help, and we developed a plan to build a small vertical garden to be about 2.5' by 2.5'. The "we" part of the equation vanished when Marian told me that she would build one at home over a weekend. She produced our first garden using a plastic flower box framed with wood, filled with dirt and moss and covered with screen mesh. Success!!!
With the successful creation of Marian's garden, Chris Read and I went into high gear with the idea of a larger hanging garden along the wall of the Uplands science wing. The key to the larger garden is a commercial product called wolly pockets.
www.woollypocket.com/?gclid=CL_I47KL_KYCFQqAgwod4yEpGg
We plan future installations of vertical gardens as cover for the black chain link fences along the entrance driveway of campus.
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